


The Stars of His Army

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2009, AU, Community: Sweet Charity, Gen, Post Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean never closes his eyes, not even when the light seeps under his skin, sliding sinuous and unstoppable between muscles and bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars of His Army

**Author's Note:**

> See [ original post](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/177229.html) for a/n.

And all the stars of his army  
are now dull, and resemble coal consumed by fire.

-*-

Dean's never been possessed, not even once. But he remembers the yellow in his father's eyes and the coppery taste of blood in his throat and John's twisted features and the marks of hate around his mouth, and then he remembers the pain in his chest and gut and that he thought he was going to be turned inside out right there in a dirty cabin in the middle of nowhere. But in the end he wasn't.

Dean doesn't know what it means to be possessed.

He only has Sam's tortured eyes as a clue, and confusion mixed with horror on the face of countless victims. But he remembers Sam's punches and the alien smirk on his face and he remembers the twist of his features, the hate around his pursed lips and the words he'd said and how they'd cut deeper than knives and still do, sometimes, when he hangs between wakefulness and sleep and he knows that he's failed everybody that counts in his life, and possibly everybody else too.

The light is blinding, white. Ice-cold. Dean grounds himself on Sam's fingers hooked in his jacket, warm even through the many layers of coat, shirt and undershirt. Dean never closes his eyes, not even when the light seeps under his skin, sliding sinuous and unstoppable between muscles and bones. It's not pain he feels, only a gentle violation. His left arm itches, burns in the shape of Castiel's fingers , but it's not pain, no, only the clicking noise of a door locking quietly.

He wonders, though, before everything fades into dim darkness, if there's such a thing as too much light.

He wonders, but only for a moment. Then, he _understands_.

-*-

Bodies are strewn on each side of the corridor, pale skin and blood, rivers of it. Dean shakes his head, stops and stares at the light bouncing off the open eye of a man, the cornea flat, unseeing, glazed.

Sam's breath is warm on his neck and his hand gentle when he steers Dean ahead.

"Don't stop," he whispers into Dean's ear. "Please, Dean, don't stop."

Sam's voice holds shame and fear and Dean's legs are heavy, a kind of narcotic feel to them that spreads upward, up to his drooping lids.

They're on the run and if it weren't for the fact that it's a very serious business – end of the world serious, Bobby would say – Dean would have felt compelled to laugh at the irony of it. Nothing's changed, not even now that Lucifer's out and hell bent on destroying the world: they're still on the run.

Dean doesn't laugh. He feels the need bubbling low in his stomach, edged red with hysteria, and he clamps on it with serrated lips until it pops and fades.

In the car, that first night, Dean wakes up to a gentle rocking motion. He wakes up thinking Sam and finding him in the driver's seat, and the lights on the dash are unfamiliar, and the headlights of an oncoming truck choose that moment to clear the shadows on Sam's face like a flash going off, and Dean sees the tears streaking Sam's right cheekbone. They are odd on his otherwise expressionless face and Sam's doing nothing to wipe them out.

It's still too dark outside, perhaps an hour before dawn. Over the edge of the white line the fields are black holes. He moves from his position against the passenger door; the right side of his face feels clammy-cold where it was pressed against the glass.

Dean has never been possessed, not even once, but he's sure it shouldn't feel like it does. He raises his hand and it moves as expected, blinks his eyes and there's a gray-smudged darkness behind his lids then the dim light of the car when he opens them. He breathes in and out, twice. Everything's working as it should.

Dean asks, "What the hell happened, Sam?"

Sam stays silent, hands curved over the wheel. They're crossing a bridge and Dean counts the rhythmic bumps under the tires.

"Sam--"

There's no heat in Sam's voice when he talks. There's nothing at all. "I don't know, Dean, okay? I don't fucking know."

Sam keeps driving.

-*-

Lucifer speaks, _Oh, so this is all they could come up with? You're the best they have to offer? Boy,_ he says and his voice is like the legs of thousand of insects clicking on a wooden floor. _Boy,_ he says again, _you think you can keep me in?_

The only comeback Dean can think of is _shut the fuck up_. And he knows it's weak, he knows he's weak and Lucifer's right.

_Let me out, then,_ Lucifer says. _Let me out, Dean-o, let me out._ And he keeps saying it over and over until Dean cranks the volume of the radio up and ignores the sideways glances Sam throws his way like lifelines, ignores everything, the road and the voice in his head and the quiet night and the certainty that he's going to unleash Lucifer soon, not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon because he's not. Strong. Enough.

-*-

It's Castiel who fills in the blanks.

He appears in Bobby's kitchen two hours after he and Sam have arrived.

Castiel looks gaunt, shriveled, only a shadow of the powerful being Dean had been afraid of once. The sleeves of his trench coat are dark, drenched in blood from elbow to wrist. His hands, by comparison, are too clean, too white and delicate. Dean wants to ask how he is, but Castiel raises his hand in a stopping motion, head bent slightly to the side like he's trying to be reassuring. His face has a terrible quality to it. Dean doesn't feel reassured.

"You're not safe here," he says. Around his eyes, Dean can see his entire life, thousands of years, each one carved in deep crinkles on Jimmy Novak's skin.

Dean stands, out of the corner of his eye he sees Sam standing too, right behind him.

Bobby asks, "why?"

"This," Castiel points to Dean, "was the plan all along."

Dean shakes his head, but he knows, he knows. He would have known even if Castiel's voice hadn't had the ring of inexorable truth. Whatever's inside Dean thrashes wildly against his breastbone and adrenaline curses fast in his veins straight to his heart.

"You were never supposed to be the weapon, Dean," Castiel says. "Only the trap."

"You used him," Sam says suddenly, a whisper, loud and angry. He steps in front of Dean and Dean's too shocked to even react, and behind the large span of Sam's back, Dean can't see Castiel's face anymore. "You used him," Sam repeats, voice raising, and there's rage in it, boiling and sparkling in his seething voice but Castiel's next words make Sam's shoulders slump.

"We're all guilty of something," Castiel says.

-*-

_I don't know why He liked you better_, Lucifer says._ You're just meat, fragile bones and blood._ Dean feels a movement like Lucifer's rummaging around in his insides, remembers Hell, hands did that for real, and shivers.

_You're like children. Easily swayed, weak-willed, breakable. Are you breakable, Dean? I know you are._

_Why me?_ Dean asks. He knows, but Dean's always wanted to check his sources, get another opinion.

_Aren't you happy, Dean? I could have taken Sam. Would that have worked better for you?_

Dean shakes his head. Lucifer sighs, sounds put upon. _Fine then,_ he says._ You were marked for me, Dean, that's why. You were brought back for me._

-*-

Castiel spends an entire day drawing symbols on each external wall of Bobby's house. Dean's sitting on the dusty ground, back hot against the metal of the 1975 Spitfire Bobby won't let him fix. He sits there and stares. The symbols dissipate like tracks in the sand, gone the moment Castiel moves to draw in white paint another complicated circle of planets and moons and lines, some straight, some curved, and others weaving themselves lightly around the pillar and under the windows, until the front wall's alive and moving with those ageless signs for a long moment, and then it goes back to being just the old siding of Bobby's house, the paint faded and peeled away in spots.

When he's done, Castiel asks for a knife and cuts Jimmy Novak's arm, gathers the blood in his hand until they're not pale anymore but smudged red. He imprints the form of it on a post on the porch, and Dean covers his eyes at the sudden flash of light, feels the ground under him ripple gently like a small wake under a boat and then nothing else happens.

"It should be safe, now," Castiel says. His head's still bowed, his left shoulder lower than the right where the arm stretches, hand flat against wood.

Dean stands up, wonders idly if the ritual hurt Castiel, then glances up at the window where Sam's standing, curtain drawn aside to look outside.

"Thank you," he tells Castiel.

Castiel's head bows lower before he turns. Castiel's stare is so intense, burning in the low light of the sun, with something else that's indefinable and otherworldly. Dean wonders for a moment if he's getting a glimpse of Castiel's form, there in the depths of those foreign eyes. But Castiel blinks rapidly and then there's only the blue of Jimmy's irises staring back at Dean.

"I can see him, Dean," Castiel says. He steps closer, so close Dean can sense the draft of air on his face when Castiel breathes out.

Castiel raises his bloodied hand, leaves it hanging mid-air like he's not sure what to do with it now that he's initiated the movement. Emotions chase themselves across Castiel's face, some Dean can easily recognize, like the hint of regret in the downward slope of his mouth. The dominant one Dean can't define – maybe awe in the widening of Castiel's eyes, maybe a sense of wonderment. Castiel's hand finally touches Dean's face and Dean's scared for a moment that it will burn, isn't expecting the simple warmth of the palm against his skin. The cooling blood is sticky, but under it, the fingertips are smooth when Castiel caresses his cheek, tenderly, as if Dean were a child.

"I can hear him," Castiel says, "calling me. And he's beautiful." Castiel drags the last word out like it's being torn violently from his lips, then he cocks his head sideways, hand still on Dean's face. "You could let him out, Dean. You're the only one who could let him out. That was the plan, Dean, all along." He drops his hand suddenly and Dean feels the loss of it when the breeze hits the heated skin.

"Don't you ever let him out, Dean. Please," he says, and then he's gone with a flutter of raised dust that stings Dean's eyes.

-*-

Lucifer talks. Dean opens his eyes to a darkness that is a complete void of nothingness.

Lucifer's voice isn't a real voice at first, just an annoying buzz and Dean thinks there's something in his ears, starts scratching them to get rid of it until he breaks the skin with his blunt nails and feels blood wetting his fingertips, his hair, the pillow, feels his skin crawl with repulsion even as the noise gets loud and louder and then drowns out everything else, even his breath, as he's being pulled inside himself where the light is white and cold and dangerous and the world there tastes of sulfur and blood, and above all Dean's fear.

_Let me out, Lucifer says. Let me out._

-*-

He dreams of a stream and fresh water, wakes up thirsty with it. For a moment, the sun blinds him and his heart starts beating so hard he feels it throbbing in his head. He blinks the light out of his eyes until the shape of Bobby's guest room takes form: the heavy decoration on the wallpaper, the corner of the closet right beside the window where the curtains are flimsy and rocking back and forth with the breeze.

When he tries to move, his body is heavy, weighed down against the mattress and he panics again, thinks, _I'm tied down_, and that ancient fear's so strong it cuts him at the middle and steals all the air from his lungs for a long tortured moment until Dean breathes in.

The sudden panic stops when he sees the top of Sam's head, the mop of his hair matted and sweaty. Sam's still, his breathing is even. His body is contorted in an awkward position, half on Dean's bed and half on the floor, like he was kneeling by the bed when he fell asleep.

It's muscle memory that makes his hand move. Sam's hair is longer than ever, the strands are familiar between his fingers as is the shape of his head that still fits in the curve of his palm.

Sam jerks awake, the movement makes Dean's hand slide and thump on the mattress with a soft sound. Sam's face is freshly bruised, on his chin, on the corner of his lips. The clotted blood in his nostrils is maroon, speckled with black. Dean's eyes find his own scraped knuckles, and they are red, splattered with blood that isn't his own.

-*-

The water at Bobby's always hot no matter how long Dean stays under the spray. The pressure's nice and the ivory scent of the soap brings back memories of when he and Sam were just John's children, sent to bathe first and then to bed with a stern command so the grown-ups could have grown-up talks. Dean used to take Sam's hand when they climbed the stairs, helped him to take off his clothes and then they showered together, spitting mouthfuls of soapy water on each other's face and laughing until the muscles in their bellies hurt, clenched with exertion.

Dean works the soap in his hands until the foam is white and thick and comes up with the perfect solution. He knows that killing the host doesn't affect the demon, but Lucifer's possession of Dean Winchester is different, backward. Dean rules his body.

He thinks it over as he washes his hair and then later on when he wipes the steam off the mirror and lathers his face with shaving soap. He wonders why Bobby and Sam, or even Castiel, didn't come up with it earlier: it seems so easy. Too easy.

Lucifer's silent, only sign of his presence the oily substance right under his skin.

Dean ponders his choices: a shot to the head, slitting his carotid. Setting himself on fire would bring a sort of poetic justice to it all. The angels, maybe, as a last resort. Dean looks at his reflection, bloodshot eyes rimmed with lack of sleep, white foam bright against dark circles. Dean looks at his reflection and finds a new, reluctant kind of hope on his face.

-*-

"We could let the angels take care of this." Dean's looking out the window. Sam's head whips up sharply, blurred reflection in the glass.

"I'm just saying," Dean continues, "it'll work."

Sam's eyes widen, a vibration in his nostrils announces rage ready to spill over, but Dean's not afraid. He wants Sam to be angry, wants Sam to yell, wants Sam to say fucking something instead of sitting on the ground, books open around him and face tilted high like he's proud of the bruises Dean put there.

"You know I'm right," Dean says, and his voice is mean: he knows where to cut and how and he knows Sam better than anyone else.

"Not this time," Bobby says and that's enough to shut Dean up. His argument isn't strong. It's not even the one he wants to make. It's not about the angels, anyway.

Bobby's been really quiet during it all, eyes hidden by his cap, the droop of his shoulders odd.

Dean knows Bobby's on Sam's side in this. He's caught them talking at strange times during the day and night, their voices whispers he hasn't been able to discern. Once, Dean heard Sam's voice break with tears and Dean had stopped, immobile, on the last step of the stairs, hands around the rail, not quite knowing what he's supposed to do, what he's supposed to fix.

Bobby nudges Sam's shoulder with his knee. "Found something?"

Dean stares at Bobby's hand curved around an ancient-looking book. It looks old, Bobby's hand, old and parched like the book itself, older than it ought to be, all lined with bluish veins and dry skin. Dean freezes, every muscle in his body tightly bound around Lucifer's grating mirth.

"What the hell's going on, Bobby?"

Bobby ducks his head too smoothly, hides it more thoroughly under the shadow of his hat. "Quit your yammerin', boy. We've got work to do."

Dean shakes his head, goes to the window: the hairs on his arms rise with a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold.

The earth around the house is ochre, cracked like all the water's evaporated overnight, and everything looks dimmed, colors bleached out and Dean looks back at Bobby, and his face is all wrinkled and cracked like the earth, and then Dean takes Bobby's hat and Bobby doesn't stop him, just lets loose a mournful sigh that whistles through his pursed lips.

Dean stares, mesmerized, at Bobby's hair. It's flimsy, more white than grey. He thinks of touching it but his fingers curl at his sides, and he's frozen. The skin around Bobby's lips is sagging, and everything about Bobby suddenly looks too fragile and old.

Bobby sighs. "I woke up like this," he says. "I don't know why Sam ain't affected." And that is a lie because everybody in the room knows why Sam's not affected.

Dean glances up at Sam, and Sam's head is bent, chin tucked against his chest.

"We think it happened when Lucifer broke free yesterday night," Bobby continues.

The horror makes a shiver run down Dean's spine, the blow of a whip.

"I didn't… I, Sam," he calls. "I didn't--" But he did, if only for a moment, he did. Enough to render the land sterile, enough to suck years from Bobby's life. _Jesus,_ he thinks.

"I know," Sam hurries to say, stands and then steps closer to Dean."We know, Dean, but maybe it was enough for him to come up to the surface."

Dean remembers the feeling of being pulled inside himself, into all that light and shakes his head. He can't explain how it was, swimming in it. How he'd missed the colors in all that clinical white.

He closes and opens his eyes, but everything stays the same, the fixed tableau of Bobby's living room. Sam at his left and Bobby in front of him.

"You know I'm right, Sam," says Dean, thinks about his plan and nods.

Sam shakes his head, bites his lip. "No, Dean. No, not this time."

-*-

They've said goodbye a thousand times, so many times that Dean can't keep them straight in his head. He remembers the faces, though, every single one. Those he couldn't wait to see disappear in his rearview mirror and those he wouldn't have minded getting to know better. Lost chances Dean had been too stupid to recognize, had let go, the regret pushed down deep where he wouldn't have to acknowledge it.

Bobby's standing on the porch when Sam and Dean leave, and the only difference this time from countless others is that Dean knows they're never coming back here. He glances at the house and at the junkyard, sees the memories of a lifetime dancing slowly in the gray light of the early morning. They hang between the cars, translucent and smeared with the same rust. Dean looks over at Sam and sees his face twist with the same awareness.

Bobby must see it too because he's walking now, and it doesn't matter that he's hobbling slightly with the weight of the years suddenly dropped onto his back: his eyes are on fire and angry and pained and his fingers are bony and still strong and digging with painful force through the layers of clothes around the cap of Dean's shoulder, his other hand on Sam's. Bobby shakes them both hard.

"Don't you dare, you stupid fools. Don't you dare."

-*-

Fast through South Dakota and heading south. Dean in the driver's seat and Sam sitting against the passenger door, curled over like he's trying to squeeze himself in as little as space possible. As if that would work with Dean never being able to see half of the things that are around him when Sam's present.

Silence settles in the car like a barrier, and it's weird, because they've talked, he and Sam, they have, but never alone, not since that night at St. Mary's six days ago – a lifetime back – Bobby always a buffer between them to ease the way. Nothing's changed though, Dean still doesn't know how to fix it, what to fix, or if he can. The words won't come.

He fingers the hex bag on his hip, knows it's a meager protection compared to Castiel's wards and symbols, but it gives him a sort of calm feeling – he only needs for it to work for a while, until he's decided how to do it. _When_.

He looks over at Sam, whose furrowed brow reminds Dean of how he'd looked earlier, the knot of concentration on his forehead as he'd prepared the hex bags—asafetida and dry chamomile flowers, mint and agrimony and something powdery and gray that Dean couldn't identify. She taught me how to make them, Sam said, and Dean felt Sam's eyes on his back, the heavy weight of them, the intonation of his voice, like a question. Both of them knew who _she _ was, but Dean hadn't wanted to look at Sam's face for fear of seeing regret or, worse, grief.

But they're hidden, now, from both angels and demons, and Lucifer's been quiet all day and Dean can forget for a moment that he's got a bomb inside him ready to explode and wipe out everything he knows, can forget that he and Sam are still so distant and that the silence is larger than a gulf or an ocean between them, and Dean has no idea if he can build a bridge. But he wants to, he wants to so much.

The road out of South Dakota is familiar, backroads full of potholes and sudden curves under the shade of a cluster of trees. The horizon's large once they come out of it, its so far away that Dean can't say where the world ends.

-*-

_Do you know why I went away?_ Lucifer asks. Dean scoffs loudly and draws a startled look from Sam. Lucifer talks like he's just left the house of his family.

_He treated us like shit. His perfect little soldiers, ready to snap our back straight at His command._

It takes a moment for Dean to understand what he's talking about, but then he does and _Jesus,_ he thinks.

_But we didn't mind. He loved us, so we did what He asked us to do. It was good. He _loved_ us. We were His. His children. His._

_And then you came along. _

We were his sons and he loved us. He loved me, he says, sounds like he's spitting out the words, twisted and ugly. And then he falls silent.

-*-

The weather gets progressively worse with each passing mile. In Kansas, it's raining hard, a deluge hitting the windshield straight on until it's like driving into a wall of water. The rain looks _alive_, a wet, sinuous mass, and behind it a deformed, amorphous world hard to navigate. Dean's eyes fix on the road and the nearly undistinguishable yellow line in the middle. The thumping noise of the rain is deafening and Dean only hears Sam because they're passing under a bridge.

"Stop, Dean. Please, stop," Sam's saying, over and over, voice tiny and breathless, like he's missing a lung and there's no air in the car, not enough air to fill the other up.

Dean looks Sam's way, startled away from the hypnotic passing of the road. A single glance but he sees it: sweat shiny on Sam's forehead and upper lip, his face bleached white, eyes sunken like he's been sick for months. And maybe he has, he has been and Dean couldn't see it.

The noise drowns the words Dean doesn't have and he stops on the shoulder of the road, feels the squishy mud that sinks under the tires, swears when Sam's hands reach for the door and he's out himself and at Sam's side in time to see him take two steps and then sink in the mud on his knees, arms curled around his middle.

Sam's entire body is trembling, and his face is red, blotchy and looks swollen by the tears and the rain.

Dean looks at Sam's knees disappearing into the mud, thinks, stupidly, that it'll be a bitch getting the stains out. They're so far away from any town and the closest Laundromat, and Sam's going to be miserable sitting in the car in his wet, mud-splashed jeans.

"Sam," he says, can't even hear himself above the rain that pounds the roof of the car and the road, drops so big they ricochet like projectiles. He shouts, "Sam."

Sam uncurls his right arm without raising his head, stretches it straight in a stopping motion that's like a physical barrier and Dean does stop.

"Go away, Dean," he says, voice carrying somehow above the noise. "You can't stay – God…"

Dean sees him swallowing, and then.

Sam looks straight at him, hair plastered against his face. He's sodden, they both are, cold water sliding into the neck of his shirt, making him shiver.

"Don't come close, Dean," Sam says.

"Why?" Dean asks, and Sam squeezes his eyes shut, bites his lower lip white.

"Because," he says, "because I keep thinking if I just drink your blood I can, I could… and God help me, I'm this close to doing it and you have to stay away from me. God, go away, leave me, please, Dean, please."

Sam punches the ground when he stops talking, over and over, splashes mud on his face and clothes and Dean kneels in front of him, catches his fist in both his hands, and Sam sags into Dean's grip like his bones are melted off and only a liquid pain left.

"C'mon, Sammy," Dean says, looks around so he doesn't have to look at Sam's tortured face. The rain's eased some to reveal a barren landscape of gray sky and gray ground and the gray cement of the road in the middle of it all. A semi passes and Sam's shirttails flap in the wake of it: his body does, too, like the wind is too strong to stand against.

Above Sam's head, Dean sees something that resembles a building at the end of a side road, the point where it split from the main road nearly hidden by brush and growth. He wonders if the Impala can get there, but only for a moment because his mind's already made up and he hauls Sam upright with no resistance, pushes him inside the car and drives there as fast as he can, in a low gear so the tires don't lose their grip.

-*-

The cabin's made of a single room, got no electricity and no furniture apart from a counter. Two windows on opposite walls. The wooden floor is dusty, but not filthy as if someone comes by regularly to clean up. Dean is grateful for the storm raging outside because it makes the chance of that happening while they're here less likely.

He drags the bedrolls and his duffle inside, along with a can of spray paint, comes back to find Sam passed out on the floor, a pool of dark vomit just shy of his face.

Sam's heavy and his clothes are hard to take off, wet as they are, but Dean undresses him, rolls him in the bedroll in his boxers and wipes his mouth and face with a wet towel. He kneels by Sam's side, joint aching and chest heaving, wonders when everything went south, watches Sam's face and can't see anything even close to familiar in his pained expression.

When he glances up a long time later, his knees are stiff and his legs are aching, and it's night and the rain's still pounding forcefully against the walls.

In the back of the cabin, he finds a generator, but the wires are so old and rusted there's no chance in hell it'll work. He swears loud and nasty and kicks the thing for good measure, calms only when he finds two stumps of candles in the drawer of the counter. They glow yellow and the flames tremble with the draft of air coming from the windows: they're barely enough to let him see what he's doing when he paints the floor with some of the symbols he remembers Castiel drawing on Bobby's house. The spray paint smells of chemicals, and it's red. Like blood.

When he's done, he sheds his own wet clothes, puts on a t-shirt and covers his legs with the bedroll, and watches over Sam's disturbed sleep. He's got Ruby's knife in his hand and with each twirl of it in the air the blade glints golden and red.

Lucifer's weirdly quiet through it all, but he hovers, attention keen on what's going on.

-*-

He's in Zachariah's green room, feeling as helpless and frustrated as the first time. He walks to the table and there's nothing on it, no cheeseburgers or sweaty bottles of beer buried in ice. The gold on the chairs is dull and the walls are bare, the colors a washed out gray, the stucco cracked with a of spidery lines where the art once hung.

He turns around and finds Zachariah sitting in the chair by the mirror. He smiles, says, _Sit,_ but Dean keeps standing.

Zachariah sighs, long and put upon, and Dean holds his breath, guesses this is a dream – an intrusion – but he can't know for sure until he wakes up. Thinks of Sam, sweating his withdrawal off in a cabin somewhere in Kansas, and he wants to be there so much it hurts.

_We're going to let your disobedience pass, Dean,_ Zachariah is saying, and Dean forces himself to listen, to look at Zachariah's smug face – not so smug now that Dean's _really_ looking, something akin to alarm in his voice and the small droop of his shoulders and a hint of a plaintive request when he speaks again.

_But now you need to stop this nonsense,_ he says. _Stop hiding and let us take care of it._

Dean huffs and paces a bit. Zachariah doesn't move, but Dean can sense how eager he is. Even in the dream, Zachariah's energy presses on his skin.

_You can't possibly think that you can contain him. Tell me where you are, _he says.

That makes Dean's back straighten, rage surge. _And whose fault is that, huh?_ He bends over Zachariah's chair, each hand on a armrest, gets in Zachariah's face.

_Think of Bobby Singer,_ Zachariah says, and Dean wakes up to the weak light of the candle, to the damp smell of the cabin, to his brother's face, inches from his own, eyes so dark there's no light in it and no white to be seen and Dean flinches back against the wall, thumping sound on hollow wood that travels down his spine. Sam gets closer and he's like a feral animal, lips bloodless and stretched thin against his teeth.

"Sam?" Dean asks, but he reads the answer in Sam's silence, in the fast pace of his breath. Dean nods, then. "Okay," he says, "you can have it." A long shiver when Sam nods back, but Dean had meant it, so it's all right.

The blade's cool on his arm, so sharp Dean doesn't feel the cut, only the warmth of his blood as it flows over his wrist and between his fingers. Sam's nostrils widen, twitch toward the scent of it, but he doesn't move, his face mere inches from Dean's, their noses nearly touching. Dean's eyes cross trying to focus on Sam's.

He says, "You need to stand back, Sam." But his voice is all wrong and wrecked and Sam keeps staring and Dean knows this is it, maybe, this is what he needs to do, _how_ they have to do it, blood so strongly demonic inside Dean's veins that Sam may be able to kill him, kill Lucifer, maybe. _Maybe_.

He manages to push Sam a bit, enough to work his bleeding arm between their bodies; the scent of iron is so strong that it causes his stomach to make a slow, painful turn and then there's nothing, only a numbness that spreads from the center of his chest where his heart beats, out to his limbs, to his head, a roar of white noise inside his skull and Sam's fast breathing and the smell of his sweat, and Dean thinks, this is it, and is relieved.

Sam's entire body bends over Dean's arm, fingers loose around wrist and elbow, lips a thin, stretched line, white and pale. Dean closes his eyes because no matter what, he can't look, but the moment elongates in the darkness behind his lids, with each beat of his heart, and he waits to feel Sam's lips on his wrist, wonders how it'll feel to have his brother drink his blood and doesn't realize his arm is falling onto his lap, devoid of Sam's support now, and that Sam's scrambling back on his ass until there's a pounding noise and he opens his eyes.

Sam's hitting his head against the wall, rhythmically, thump-thump-thump and a little pause and then again, eyes closed, skin glistening with sweat and the noise in Dean's head recedes finally, the absence of it brings him back into the dusty cabin, into the yellow glow of the candlelight and the trembling shadows they cast in the corner of the room, to the damning flush of shame when he realizes what he was going to do to Sam. To himself.

He thumps his own head against the wall and looks at Sam. There are tears on his face now, and he's making a sound low in his throat that hits Dean straight at his core. He tries to move, finds that his body's all alien and uncooperative and he has to push through the fog to move his bleeding arm and then the other one, to go on his hands and knees and then shuffle forward, legs dragging behind him like useless appendages.

He finally sits beside Sam, shoulder to shoulder, and the floor is cold and his wound is bleeding sluggishly, and Sam's eyes are still closed and his face is tear streaked, but he leans minutely into Dean, a barely there touch of shoulder against shoulder and they stay like that for a long time.

 

-*-

Later Sam says:

"I hate you for dying.

"And I hated you for coming back. Because it wasn't me who brought you back. _Me_. It should have been me.

"God, I missed -- I miss you so much."

Sam's voice is winded, broken. I'm a hypocrite. I was willing to kill to save the world, but not you. Not you."

Dean settles in beside Sam, floor icy-cold under his ass through the thin cloth of his still damp boxers. Stares south of Sam's face at Sam's neck and shoulders, huge even though he's sitting hunched over, knees raised toward his chest and arms curled around them like there's only a shard of warmth in the center and he wants to preserve it. Sam's once-red t-shirt is a faded pink, scattered with holes around the seams, the texture so threadbare it's nearly translucent in places. Dean is struck by the ridiculous idea of shopping, buying some shirts and underwear. New boots, maybe, a couple of pairs of jeans. He notices that Sam's fallen silent and doesn't know for how long.

"Well," Dean says, finds that the sound doesn't carry outward, stays in his brain because it's getting hard, so hard to remember when he needs to talk using his voice. "Well," he repeats, forgets for a moment what he wanted to say, lost in Sam's proximity. He realizes how much he's missed it for forty years in Hell, and how much he's missed _Sam_ since he came back, a different kind of pain that had bent everything out of shape, made it all _wrong_ because Sam wasn't by his side.

"It's all right," he says in the end. "We don't really know if it would have worked."

Sam suddenly raises his head, stares at Dean with clear eyes and snot dried around his nose, an expression so familiar and _frustrated_ on his face that it steals all of Dean's words.

"You know that it wasn't you, right?"

Dean sort of nods, but he's too confused and he's not sure Sam's right.

-*-

_She was beautiful. Reminded me of Him. That's why I chose her._

_I twisted her into betraying his own kind, and then showed him what he'd really created. It was easy. You should know it, how easy it was. Look at Sam, Dean. Look at him. How long it took? _

_It was easy._

Dean shakes his head. _No, it wasn't, _he says. _You bastards had to trick him and Sam didn't bend to you fuckers. Not fully._ He wants to shout, wants to point at Sam and say, see, he's still here. With me. You didn't win. But it's hard shouting inside his head so he stares ahead, at the road, and wishes he could stop. Listening.

He'd settle for not having to hear the crap Lucifer's spewing.

-*-

In the morning the rain eases up, leaves an overcast sky, a blackened north back along the route they've been travelling. Sam decides to drive and Dean gives him the keys and sits in the passenger seat, rolls the window halfway down and breathes in the smell of fresh rain and earth and lets the chilling wind freeze his hair and forehead and he doesn't know how, but he sleeps.

He wakes up when the sun's high in the sky. The light's weird behind the windshield, the sun too yellow against the blue, neatly cut in half by clouds.

Sam heads south and they cross into Texas through the backdoor, skimming the panhandle and the large towns. Dean's terrified all the time, grips the handle of the door so tight it bisects his palm with a red line.

Sam's brow is smooth, his eyes focused on the road, hands loose around the wheel, and there's an air of relaxation around him, like he's weightless now and he could fly away if it weren't for the roof of the car above him.

Dean stares through the fog of his panic, feels sicker with each passing mile; he says, "Sam?" like a request and a prayer but Sam keeps driving, brushes Dean's knee with the fingers of his right hand.

"We need to eat," Sam says.

Dean nods, but can't help the lurch his stomach gives at the thought, the fear he feels at the idea of being in a town, around people, and doing to them what he's done to Bobby. His stomach rolls like he's falling and he's going to throw up right now if Sam doesn't stop, opens his mouth to tell him exactly that, but the car's slowing down already, and maybe he's spoken out loud or maybe not and Sam can simply read his mind, but Sam's parking the car, turning off the engine over the creak of the door as Dean opens it. Two steps and bile mounts up, acidic burn of it that leaves a hot trail up to the roof of his mouth and then it's a flood, blackish over cracked concrete, a mini catastrophe with ants scurrying away.

Dean's eyes water, but it's the weight of Sam's hand on his back and the hold – strong and firm, long bony fingers – around his left bicep that he focuses on.

Staying like that, mouth sour with bile, skin humid with sweat and with Sam's hand on his back, Dean wonders why it is that he and Sam always find this kind of balance on the road – how simple it becomes after a while.

He says, "We'll kick his fucking ass." Sam's nod is a spasm of his hand, but it's enough.

-*-

_He didn't understand. _

Lucifer's irate. Dean's skin tremble like a wall shaking under an earthquake.

_What it is in you that He loves so much?_

It hurts, stabbing pain, but inside, without breaking the skin. It goes on and on and Dean can visualize the wound: the ripped muscles, the blood welling up from broken vessels. Blood so red that it's nearly black.

_You're nothing more than flesh that rots and trembles and falls. _

Dean's wound heals, the edges close and seal themselves shut. Lucifer says, _He should have seen it._

-*-

Dean turns on the faucet, waits for the flow of water to be clear enough and touches it. His hands tremble, fingers look swollen as if he's viewing them under a magnifying glass, but the water's cool even though it smells of chlorine and old pipes. The space between the faucet and the scarred, rusty surface of the sink is narrow, but he wedges his head in it, sideways, chin extended, stays under it until his neck aches and his hair's soaked, and when he stands, the top half of his shirt's soaked, too.

Sam enters quietly, says, "You ready?"

Dean nods, wipes his face with a paper towel that leaves on his face white, papery crumbles.

It should be night already, it is _technically_ night. There should be the moon high in the sky, stars, not this weird sun that is glinting off the packed earth but is cold on Dean's wet skin like all the warmth has soaked deep into the ground and there's nothing left.

It's been going on since they left Kansas and Dean has refused to let Sam turn on the radio: it's not like they don't know why it's happening.

He follows Sam to the car. Sam opens it, then puts the paper bags in the backseat. There's a group of people crowding the door of the shop. Truckers, baseball hats in their hands and arms tucked around beer-bellies, an old couple with hair white as snow clutching each other. A yuppie with his perfectly pressed white shirt and an average guy who's wearing a yellow t-shirt are in the front of the group, mouth agape.

Dean looks at Sam over the roof of the car; he calls, "Sam?"

Sam's head is bent and his voice is rough with tears. "Yeah, Dean," he says. "I think it's started."

Any other time, Dean would have snapped back with a sarcastic answer; he would have said, _yeah, genius, I can see that._

Dean averts his eyes from the pitiful figure Sam makes. He stares at the white-haired couple with their wizened faces.

"I was going to ask…" Dean says, stops when the stupidity of the question hits him.

The woman's got laugh lines around her eyes: the man's severe expression is betrayed by the strength with which he's holding her.

Dean stares back at Sam as he raises red-rimmed eyes. "We better go."

They're the only ones whose chins aren't pointed up at that dusky half light.

Behind a wind farm, a few miles away, black, angry clouds mar the sky: a straight line that cuts it in half like the slash of a knife. The clouds crowd north, back the way they've come.

-*-

Dean asks, _What happened?_

Lucifer's amused, he can tell. _Oh, he says. Now you want to know. _

Dean doesn't answer and Lucifer sighs and it's such a normal sound, familiar and human. The bend of his voice, when he starts to talk is like a curved road, smooth to the left and strangely soothing.

_He sent my brother to kill me._

Dean nods in his head, eyes straight ahead where the actual road is running frantically under the tires and beneath Sam's heavy foot on the gas.

_What kind of father says something like that to his son? Kill your brother, He said. But Michael couldn't. He could not. My brother loves me,_ he says._ And I want to see him. This is what I want, Dean, before I destroy your kind._

-*-

They steer clear of the highways and the main roads, take numbered ranch roads that run parallel to fenced land. Sam heads South, then West in the direction of the Mexican border and Dean nods his agreement to the bare landscape, the big horizon and the countryside dotted with animals – cows with liquid dark eyes, and long-legged horses and the golden dust they raise as they run.

"We would have made for good cowboys," he tells Sam.

"You're afraid of horses, Dean."

"I know, yeah, I know. I could have learned how to not be afraid."

The sky stays clear for hours, and then, like a battle's been won somewhere, night falls bringing the songs of cicadas in the trees and a stillness and tepid air and a black sky scattered with stars and then the moon.

They stop maybe an hour past Odessa.

Dean takes two blankets from the trunk, shakes them up to shed the dust, and hands one to Sam. They sit and look up at the sky from the shelter of a cottonwood, eat sandwiches and drink lukewarm water and are silent, only the hum of the radio on the background, signal disturbed by a bad reception but the voice loud enough to hear the tragedy behind the words, and Dean snaps after a while, crumples the paper with the tasteless sandwich in it and stands, shivering in his t-shirt and the cool air. He walks to the car then turns the radio off.

After, there's only the silence of the desert. The mesas in the distance – Castle and King, one in front of the other – like a barrier, and the road in between straight through it. They're white, lit by the moon, calcareous and bare. Water sloshes somewhere not too far off and everything is so perfect – the night and the cool air, and the smell of the earth. All that beauty's reflected on Sam's face, always on Sam's face, but with it now there's the horror of the same thoughts that are screaming inside Dean's head, the same incipient loss.

Dean's still standing, steel cool under his palm when he sees them. Shadows coming closer from the road, no vehicles in sight, but they are people, shapes clear in the moonlight. Dean counts five, maybe six – too far away to say for sure. Too late to draw a Devil's trap, but Sam dashes to the car and Dean throws him the keys, sees him opening the trunk as Dean draws his gun, checks the chamber of his own Colt and the sawed-off shotgun.

Sam closes the trunk, comes back, canister of salt in one hand and the bag with the weapons slung over his shoulder. They're in the open, defenseless, with only the thin trunk of the cottonwood at their back and no other place close enough where they can hide. Sam pours salt in a large circle around them, hands Dean the flasks with holy water, but Dean can feel the desperation of their situation creeping slowly and he doesn't know how to react, because he's pretty sure that this is the way he and Sam are going to die, somewhere south of Odessa, a place far enough off any beaten trial that their bodies might never be found.

He doesn't know if he cares.

Dean sees they're demons when they come closer – his first assumption right, but it could have gone either way, it could have been angels. Six of them, two females among them, knives in hand and eyes black.

They don't talk when they get closer, but there's a sort of glow, some sort of satisfaction in their expressionless faces, a reflected light that doesn't come from the moon. Dean wonders if it's because of Lucifer.

He nods to Sam when they're close enough, shoots the first round of rock-salt-loaded bullets, loud booms echoed by Sam's own shooting as he reloads. Enough to make them step back, reeling under the impact and curl over themselves for a second, but not enough to stop their advance.

A second round before the demons move around the circle of salt, skimming it without trespassing, and he and Sam are back to back, knives turned up and ready and holy water tracing arcs in the air that make the demons shriek and smoke.

A strong wind comes out of nowhere, thins the circle of salt and Dean's assessing, now, planning who to take out first, looking for the most dangerous, knows Sam's assessing, too, even as the first words of the _Rituale_ leave his lips. A futile attempt. A few minutes later, smirks on the demons' faces when the line of salt breaks. Sam falls silent and it's on.

Dean fights dirty – only way he knows how – legs and knees and elbows and the handle of his shotgun. He rolls with the punches he takes, to the gut and solar plexus, and throws some of his own, well-placed hits that break facial bones and the skin of his knuckles.

He's got one of the women and two men; the woman has long, straight hair, the flow of it silken – hair to thread your fingers through – the two men have hands that feel like hammers when they hit his temple and jaw. He shakes his head, stunned, mouth flooded with blood and world dissipating in black spots as his legs buckle. He gets up, angered and desperate, feels and hears Sam fighting, his fast breathing and the moans he can't bite off, the cursing and the taunts and the dust they're raising with their scuffle that tickles his nose, makes breathing hard, no oxygen, not enough anymore and he's gasping and it takes him too long to feel the pain, low in his gut, but he can't look even as he falls on his knees and the blade scrapes against his ribs and he knows that the wound is going to kill him.

There are hands on his back and he shakes them off, drunk with the need to fight and the pain, but the hands are Sam's and the demons are standing back. He looks up at Sam's face, bloodied and scraped, lips moving above the roars of Dean's blood in his ears and the pain, never ending, familiar.

_Tell your brother to close his eyes,_ Lucifer says, voice quiet and tense. Dean doesn't know if he does, because he only opens his mouth to say it, to works his swelling tongue around the blood that's trickling, bitter in his throat, before the light floods everything white.

-*-

_You saved me. _

Lucifer's nod is a wave, like a stone dropping into water.

_Why?_

_Because I need you, _ Lucifer says.

-*-

The hardness of the surface under his back is the first thing Dean registers; not a mattress, then. He tries to open his eyes but he's sleepy and exhausted and the smooth darkness behind his lids is soothing. He takes inventory of his body, knows he's healed by the absence of pain in his gut: only the familiar deep ache of a long-healed wound remains.

He's warm, covered with a blanket: the texture is rough on the exposed skin of his arm, itchy and smelling of dust and the peculiar scent of the trunk of his car. There's nobody around, no one who's breathing or moving, only wind and the chirps of birds. Water somewhere far away.

He thinks, _Sam_, and opens his eyes, sits up, aches and pains all over his body. He remembers the beating he took and he groans as he stands on legs that don't feel up to the task of carrying his weight. He's in the open, shaded from the sun by a wall, space all around him, flat, horizon unhindered in his field of vision. A single mesquite tree – more an overgrown brush than a full tree – and under it the Impala, but there's no sign of Sam.

Sam's absence sets his blood on fire. He shouts Sam's name before he can think whether he's safe doing it, walks along the wall, left hand against it for support until he can stand without help. He's east of the mesas, farther away than the previous night, the road now oblique to his position. He looks back at the blanket, sees the signs of a campfire he'd missed before and tracks of booted-feet around it. The wall he was sleeping under must have been part of a farm once, maybe a hacienda, walls of mud crumbled to nearly nothing, the outline of two large rooms still visible. Up the dirty trail there's a building with low, white walls, this one standing. A cross made of rough bricks stands on top of the roof, lopsided, one arm broken. There's nothing else, nobody else, and he must be in a full-blown panic because it takes him a second check to see that Sam's coming that way. He stills.

Sam's steps are unhurried, and even with the glare of the sun, Dean can see the stretch of a smile on his face, can sense its tentative quality, too.

He raises his eyes. The sky is a deep cobalt color and clear of clouds. He looks back at Sam. The curve of his shoulder and neck frame the cross. The perspective makes it look half of Sam's size and Dean shakes his head, closes his eyes until he feels the reverberation of Sam's steps under his bare feet.

When he opens his eyes again, Sam's standing in front of him. His face is a mess. A cut above his left eye, nose swollen and bruises on his jaw and neck.

"You're awake," Sam says.

"What happened, Sam? All I remember is the demons and that we, I…" He points at his stomach.

Sam draws air in then blows his cheeks before releasing it, looks above Dean's head when he answers.

"It's been almost three days," Sam says. "You wouldn't wake up."

_Three days._ "Guess the hex bags aren't working so well, huh?" he says.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

"Not your fault, Sam. Maybe the rules are different, now."

Sam nods. "Anyway, we were fighting, remember?" He doesn't wait for Dean to answer, passes a hand on his hair, brushes it flat under a palm. "We were losing." Small laugh, a note of hysteria in it. "I saw the demon coming at you with the knife, and you were -- then you said _close your eyes_. Wasn't even your voice…"

Dean stops him. "Lucifer," he says.

"I guessed, yeah. God, Dean. He burned everything. There weren't even bodies anymore."

"But we didn't burn."

"No," Sam says, bewildered and incredulous. "Why?"

Dean shrugs a little. He finds and holds Sam's eyes. "He says he still needs me."

Sam's expression crumbles, forehead puckered, narrow eyes.

"But why didn't he toast me?"

Dean shrugs again, thinks of the possibility, of waking up alone and never seeing Sam coming down the trail, a tentative smile on his bruised face.

"By the way, you look like shit," Dean says.

Sam touches the cut above his eye and looks affronted. "Well, thank you very much. Not everybody has the Devil inside healing them up."

Dean says, "Admit it. You got your ass handed to you by a few low-grade demons." He tries to keep his tone light even around the sudden constriction of his throat; they were going to die, he and Sam.

And maybe Sam, too, got scared, but he only swallows and says, "Funny, Dean. How's your stomach?"

They laugh and it feels good.

-*-

_Okay,_ Dean says. _Say I find Michael; say I let you speak with him. What's in it for me?_

Lucifer scoffs against his breastbone, makes Dean's breath itch. _Oh, Dean-o. Always with the deals, aren't you? There's nothing in it for you, my boy. _

_Then you'll be rotting inside me for as long as I live._

_Think you can keep me in? You?_

Dean's happy with how collected his answer is; chances are that calling Lucifer out on what he suspects is a gamble is quite the bad idea. _What's stopping you, then, huh? Get out of me now. _

But Lucifer doesn't answer, doesn't burn the world up in a ball of fire, and Dean's hands shake so much and his heart hammers hard with relief.

-*-

They walk. Half a mile down the trail, they run across a fallen windmill; the wood is rotten, claimed back by that chalky, white ground: only a paddle is still integral, pointing skyward. Past it, they find the lake – a pond, really – in a depression in the terrain. They're wearing t-shirts and jeans and the air is warm with a humid wind that makes the fabric stick to Dean's back and his feet swell inside his boots.

Dean listens. There's only the whistle of the wind, the startling noise squirrels make as they hide furtively in the bushes. Lizards dash away, visible only out of the corner of his eye and from the rustling of the leaves; flies and bees whiz around his naked arms and Dean waves them away with a hand.

The water is green, muddy, probably an abandoned drinking hole. In the distance, the way they've come, a corner of the building with the cross is visible.

Sam puts his duffle on a rock, sheds his t-shirt and throws it on top.

"Okay," Sam says. "How do we play this?"

Dean turns: he'd take off his boots but he's not going to give any advantage to Sam.

"No rules," Dean says with a smirk, flings his own t-shirt on top of Sam's.

"Like Dad taught us." Sam's tone is neither wistful nor cold, stating a fact.

They circle each other, Sam's back's straight, hands loose at his sides, alertness in the tension of his shoulders.

Dean tsks. "You show all your cards with that left shoulder, Sam. Stop doing it."

Sam's answer is a swipe of his left leg that Dean sidesteps neatly, and then it's on, moves familiar with a childhood spent sparring with each other. In Bobby's backyard and in secluded fields wherever they went, John sitting somewhere close, always giving pointers, much more rarely praise.

Dean blocks Sam, tries to work around the longer reach of his arms and legs, takes a couple of hits and gives back as hard, controlled force, so they don't hurt each other, so different from the last time they'd fought. _Close to dancing,_ Dean thinks.

The dust they raise makes his eyes water and Sam's too.

In the end, they're both on their knees, Sam's head and neck in a lock that makes Dean's forearm tremble with exertion, Sam's own hold just as sure around Dean's chest, and Dean knows it's over, feels tired in the only good way he knows.

They are wet with sweat, Sam's hair drips with it: their gasps are loud and their breathing is hard. Sam's solidity is the only reason Dean isn't down, eating sand, and Dean's sure the same is true for Sam. They are dirty and they reek and the water would feel like heaven right now, but Dean's not ready to break the contact yet and when Sam talks his voice rumbles a bit under Dean's ear.

"It would have been all right, you know," he whispers. "I was ready to die with you."

It's the exact same thought Dean had before, shouldn't surprise him so much that they can be like this again, learning the same lessons at the same time.

"Whatever we have to do," Dean says, blinks sweat out of his eyes and swallows. "We do it together."

Dean's own voice is a whisper, but Sam's hold tightens and Dean knows he heard.

-*-

Lucifer says, _Showtime, Dean. Let's see how you play this one._

-*-

Sam puts another stone inside the hole, methodic and careful, and when he's done he sits on his haunches to look critically at his work. His hands and forearms are white, hairs peppered with dust, but the pentagram is visible from where Dean's sitting against the Impala.

"I hope we're doing all of this for nothing," Sam says. He drinks and wets a towel with water from the bottle, passes it over his face and neck, but all he does is smudge the mud.

Dean digs a splinter from his index finger, sucks the drop of bright blood until it stops bleeding. They've been at this for two days, working in the morning and through the afternoon until there's not enough light to see by anymore. His hands are swollen and scraped bloody from the digging. Dean washes and dries them, then wraps his palms and wrists with tape and joins Sam at the devil's trap.

"You know they'll come, Sam," he says. "All of them." Demons and angels, both wanting to claim their prize.

Sam nods, keeps digging and filling.

In the middle of the pentagram, there is a pile of river stones, white and smooth. Two bags filled with them are by the Impala, ready to be used. Dean kneels and picks up his stick, digs along the circle of the Fifth Pentacle they've drawn on the earth. Ten inches down then moving straight along the design; he makes the channel large enough for the stones. Every ten or fifteen inches, he fills it with them – all perfectly lined like a wall – then he wets the rocks with holy water and covers them with the removed soil.

He and Sam work elbow to elbow and the music trails from the car. Dean had turned the radio off a couple of hours ago – no music today, only bad news – in favor of a cassette tape. It's one of the oldest, the sound scratchy like it's coming straight through from another time, but Robert Johnson's blues is made of sweet and melancholy notes and his guitar is like his other voice. He turns it off, later, to save the battery, but the notes keep playing in his head.

In the afternoon they're done. Dean smacks his dry lips, says, "I'd kill for a cold beer."

"God, me too," Sam says.

Sam's quiet laugh and the warmth of the fading sun on Dean's neck and the ache of a job well done and Dean is good.

Later, they stand at the edge of the devil's trap, the design visible only because of the overturned earth. It's big, maybe fifteen feet from each point of the pentagram and even Dean's impressed that they pulled it off. Demons are taken care of, at least.

They're covering the last traces of the trap with sand when Dean sees Castiel. The sun is low, more red than yellow in its rays, and Castiel's standing in front of the chapel. Dean nudges Sam and they move toward him but when they're halfway there Castiel turns and goes inside.

Dean has never entered the chapel. Sam has, often at night, excusing himself with his head bent toward the ground, and Dean hasn't asked why; he hasn't asked what it is that he's found in there when he comes back looking troubled and exhausted, but sleeping through Dean's watch still and peaceful, like when he was a baby.

The chapel's missing a wall and half its roof. The remaining walls still have traces of decorations, and maybe once the place had been pretty like any church Dean's ever seen, but now there are only bird nests in the corner and the floor is blanketed with dirt and droppings. There's an altar made of stone against the farthest wall, and Castiel is on his knees in front of it and Dean's throat constricts because he remembers how reassuring it was to have that kind of blind faith in someone.

He and Sam stare in silence. When Castiel's done, he kisses the altar and turns. He doesn't come closer, but his eyes find Dean, find something else the way they widen the longer he stares.

"The devil's trap is a good idea," he says.

"Cas--"

"I'm here to warn you," Castiel says. "They'll be here soon." He comes closer, then, each step measured like it costs him a great effort. "Zachariah will be here soon."

Dean nods.

"He'll have Lucifer's sword with him and he'll try to kill Lucifer."

Dean swallows, Sam gets closer, arm touching arm.

"You must avoid that at any cost." A furrow of his brow and now Castiel is close and the sun from behind shows the outline of his wings, but when Dean blinks the glare away, it's disappeared like a mirage.

"Why?" Sam asks.

Castiel looks Sam's way. "When Lucifer rebelled there was a war in Heaven. A few of my brothers were misled and they followed Lucifer and fell and it was a long time until peace reigned in Heaven again. The stories say that God couldn't bear the thought of having Lucifer, his favorite among us, killed. He ordered the Archangel Michael to trap him forever."

He stops talking, takes a breath. "We can't go against His will. Lucifer must not be killed."

"Well, Lucifer's telling another story," Dean says.

Castiel's surprise darkens his eyes. "He has talked to you."

"Yeah. It's been Chatty Cathy since St. Mary's."

Actually, Lucifer has been silent the last three days, his presence inside Dean as strong as ever, though, stretched tight like he's rooting himself deeper still.

"He has a request, in fact," Dean continues. Like they're bargaining a ransom and Dean's the first hostage and the rest of the world, the remaining.

"He wants to see his brother Michael before toasting the world."

Castiel nods. "Go, now. Rest," he says. "We'll hide you tonight."

Dean bites back a curse when they appear, liquid shadows detaching from the walls – other angels he guesses, seven of them.

"Who are they?" he asks, alarmed.

"Don't be afraid. These are Anna's friends," Castiel says, head bowed. "They don't agree with what Zachariah is doing. They will help."

"Okay," Dean says, and they're nearly at the door when Sam turns, stops Dean by a wrist.

"Castiel, what's your plan? You must have something in mind."

"Tell him," one of the angels says. And she's not exactly hostile, but her voice has a cold, uncompromising quality, like Castiel's had those first few times they spoke in the beginning.

"We could try to lock Lucifer up again. In Hell. We could--" he stops, swallows and Dean can actually see him soldiering up. "Our idea," he says, glances sideways to where the other angels are, sounds reluctant when he continues. "Our idea is to bring Dean back there, close every door of Hell for good with Lucifer inside."

Dean should have known, he should have. Doesn't make it any less hard, though, that same fear that has never left, but it makes sense that everything starts and ends there, and he's ready, _he is_. Sam hasn't let go of his wrist and Dean _knows_ what that means, knows Sam won't let go this time. Dean can't help the selfish comfort he takes in it. Can't help thinking that it's the right thing, too.

Castiel comes closer."I'm sorry, Dean. I didn't know. I would never--"

"I know, Cas," Dean says, and he _does_: the truth is written all over Castiel's face. "Why aren't we doing it right now?" he asks.

"The doors of Hell are being guarded. We need time to find a breach and get you there."

"What about Michael?" says Sam, enough desperation in his voice to pull painfully at Dean's heart.

"I'm afraid nobody knows where Michael is."

-*-

The first ones to show are the demons. They come when the sun's been up for an hour, possessing farmers in checkered flannel shirts and Cowboy's hats. They would have looked like a posse had it been another time, with their guns – hunting rifles high-caliber, long range good for wild cats terrorizing cattle and a pair of stupid hunters standing in the open with only the protection of a devil's trap and a low, frayed wall.

The angels are by the chapel – they 've been there all night – holy and absolute, searing with power that makes the hairs on Dean's arms stand straight. When they see the demons, six go down the dirty trail to meet them; they look frail and _not enough_ against such a large group.

Castiel stays behind, between Dean and Sam and the demons. The angel-lady is at his side, inscrutable face turned sideways in that peculiar angel way, like she's a bird and she's tasting the air, listening to sounds nobody else can hear.

Dean checks the chamber of his shotgun again, and looks for the rocks that mark the position of the trap. During the night Castiel did something to it, said it would hold, now, but it doesn't make him feel any less exposed. He looks at the Impala, now parked sideways between the trap and the ruins of the wall. If the demons start to shoot she'll be the one that will pay for it first. He resists the urge to pat her, to say that he's sorry; it's a good end, and she knows it.

He turns to Sam, instead, and this is definitely not the end he'd wanted for him. He hadn't envisioned _this_ future. Ever. Not when Sam was tiny and so dependent on Dean for every basic need, or when he was a teen, hard-headed and sulky. Not when he packed his bags and left for a brilliant future. Or when Dean dragged him back, hurting and full of rage.

Sam checks his own guns, then he straightens the jugs of holy water, and his hands are scraped from the digging but each movement is accurate, economic and capable. They are large and muscled, knotted knuckles fast around his shotgun. Sam looks back and smiles a bit, says, "This is it, then?" But it's not a question and Dean doesn't answer.

-*-

_It will be a blood bath,_ Lucifer says.

Dean shoots rock salt-filled bullets into the gut of a fifty-something with red hair: the force of the impact pushes him right into the waiting arms of an angel but Dean doesn't stop to see what the angel does. He pivots around, instead, throws an arc of holy water against the face of yet another demon who stumbles back and falls into the trap. He rages and shrieks inside the barrier, smoking off a sulfurous smell.

Sam's reloading, and Dean covers him, shoots his last round and his shotgun is sizzling hot and burns the palm of his right hand when he opens the barrel. They've been going at it so long the world has narrowed to the smell of cordite and the shouts of pain and the white flashes he sees in the corner of his eyes whenever an angel kills a demon. Spent shells that crunch under their boots and bodies piling around the trap, some dead, some unconscious. Lucifer's smug, satisfiisfaction when even more demons come up the trail. More men and women, _Jesus_, some are just boys.

_You could stop all of this,_ says Lucifer and Dean detects a note of worry under the cocky attitude, but Dean can't stop to think about what Lucifer is afraid of, not when the ground starts trembling, a rumbling sound, deep within the earth, that explodes outside in a long, wide crack that breaks the devil's trap in two.

Everybody freezes, demons and angels – slow smirks on the demons' faces and incredulity on the angels' – and it's damn ridiculous, really, but then Sam shouts, "Run" and the spell is broken. Sam grabs the sleeve of Dean's jacket, drags Dean toward the chapel; the angels open them a way out, cover their retreat and their back.

Inside the chapel, Dean blinks the sunlight out of his eyes and in those cool shadows it takes him a moment to see Zachariah, but Sam has and he stops in front of Dean, a human shield.

"Good to see you, Dean," Zachariah says, angels at his back like henchmen as though he is an old-fashioned mafia boss. The same obtuse expressions on their faces, suits perfectly tailored over big muscles.

"Good to see you, too, Sam. I never had the chance to thank you for helping us out."

_Arrogant asshole,_ Dean thinks and he's not sure if the thought belongs to him or to Lucifer.

The noises from the battle are muted; the sunlight comes only through the breach in the wall and the half-caved-in roof.

"What do you want?" Dean asks.

"Oh, many things, but first--" A flicker of his hand and Sam's flying against the wall, discarded and dismissed like he's inconsequential, useless after having been used.

"You fucking bastard--"

Dean tries to go to Sam, who's groaning on the floor, stunned by the impact with the wall. Dean sees no blood, but Sam's eyes are unfocused. Sam blinks furiously, tries to stand, but Zachariah stops him when he's on his knees, stops Dean too, mid-step.

_Good, old Zachariah,_ Lucifer says. _Still with the same tricks._

_You're not scared of him?_ Dean asks even as he tries to curse Zachariah and finds his throat constricted by the same force that's keeping him still, voice trapped inside.

"I'm sorry about your voice," Zachariah says. "But I've had enough of your smart mouth."

"Zachariah, stop this." Castiel, behind him, close to the entrance.

_I've never been scared of Zachariah and his scheming,_ Lucifer says. _But I should have known that he was behind all of this._

_Fuck you,_ Dean says, eyes holding Sam's, and he's starting to get worried now at how unfocused they are, and it's getting hard following all the threads of the shitty situation they're in, inside and outside.

Dean glances at Zachariah. From the fold of his suit jacket he produces a spear, longer than a knife but sharp like one, its silver gleaming.

"You broke the devil's trap," Castiel says.

"I was getting bored waiting you out," says Zachariah." Now it's time for you to go, Castiel. Do not interfere. Your rebellion has gone on long enough."

"I have not rebelled," Castiel protests, fervor in his seething voice. "I have not rebelled to God."

_Oh, poor, naïve Castiel. Always so trusting,_ Lucifer says.

Sam's eyes roll back inside his skull, Dean trapped and powerless to do a single thing as Sam violently convulses.

Zachariah comes closer, spear in hand. "You know this is necessary, Dean."

_It will not work,_ Lucifer says.

Dean can't see Sam's face anymore and Sam has stilled, finally palms flat on the ground, head bowed.

"There are other ways," Castiel says, begs. Dean thinks, _Yeah, Hell._ Screwed in both cases is the only, honest way to put it.

"No, this ends now! I will not let this abomination _live_," says Zachariah.

"It's not your place to decide," Castiel says.

"It is. God was too weak, and now he's left," Zachariah says. "There's nobody else to make the hard, necessary choices, but me."

_It will not work,_ Lucifer repeats and Dean has to ask, this time, _What? What isn't going to work? Answer me, you fucking bastard--_

He goes a bit crazy, then. He needs to see Sam's eyes, he needs to make him understand that he's tried, they both have, and it's all right, even if it ends like this.

_Hush,_ says Lucifer. _Listen._

And when it comes, Dean doesn't miss it.

"Dean," Sam calls, his voice loud above that cacophony of voices. Sam stands, and Zachariah first is surprised and then afraid and Lucifer's elated when he says, _Yes._

Dean draws a deep breath even as the walls start shaking and a high-pitched noise drowns all the voices, but not Sam's when he says, "Trust me, Dean," arm stretched between them. "Please," Sam says. The pressure against Dean's body lessens and then disappears.

He reaches out, takes Sam's hand.

The light is blinding, ice-cold. It comes out of nowhere; its force crashes against the walls and showers them with debris when the ceiling explodes. Then it glides over Dean and into Sam.

-*-

Dean's never been possessed, not even once, but he knows this is how it should feel.

They're at the pond near the camp, but the water is clear, not the green-mossy color from that day he and Sam sparred in the sun. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor and Sam is in front of him, only it's not Sam. The differences are subtle, gone the moment Dean focuses on them, and there's a glow to him, light coming from inside.

Lucifer raises Dean's left arm, palm open, fingers straight. Dean sees a similar glow to his skin, wonders if he looks as alien to Sam as Sam does to him.

His voice doesn't sound like his own voice when Lucifer says, "Brother, you came."

The smile on the face that's not Sam's sad, regretful. "You were always full of doubts, Lucifer."

"But I never doubted you."

Michael nods, "You wanted to see me, and I'm here. Why?"

Lucifer uncrosses Dean's legs and he's standing, pacing back and forth and the water paces with him, wave after wave, churning and foaming.

A few steps and he's back in front of Sam. "You know why. You've always known. Stay with me, this time, Michael."

Michael makes Sam stand and they're face to face, now, and Sam's hand is warmer than it ought to be against Dean's skin.

"I never left you, Lucifer," he corrects. "It was you who left."

"Because of Him," Lucifer spits and the water mounts and swells in a wall that crashes with a loud, wet sound against the shoreline and soaks them with the force of its spray. Lucifer doesn't flinch and neither does Michael.

"He told you to kill me," Lucifer continues. "Your own brother."

"No," Michael says. "He didn't tell me that. He's never wanted you dead. Never. Punishment he can deliver. But not death, not to you. You were always his favorite."

"Then why? All this time… It's been an eternity in that cage, alone. Was my love so undeserving?"

Michael slides Sam's hand from cheek to neck, close to a caress. "You have to understand," Michael says, measures the words and says them slowly. A whisper. "Your love was dangerous."

The tears when they come are unexpected, alien. Dean only feels them because his eyes burn in that peculiar way and his body tries to keep them in – like it's a genetic instinct, code hammered on his marrow, that he can't and shouldn't let them fall.

Lucifer cries Dean's tears and Dean can't access Lucifer's thought anymore, not even in that sideways way he's become familiar with, as if by taking control of his body, Lucifer has cut that tremulous tie, but he knows that this is the moment where all hangs in the balance; Sam's life and his own, and everybody's else, everything that Dean ever deemed worthy and sacred.

All of it, for this family squabble older than the world.

"Come back home," Michael says with Sam's voice and Sam's wide eyes and that earnestness Dean knows so well."He's been waiting for a long time."

Silence stretches toward the desert and the mesas, beyond the line of the horizon.

"I've been waiting, too," Michael says.

A nod, tentative. The water stills.

Michael pushes Sam hand through Dean, reaching in between muscles and bones where the light of Lucifer has hooked itself.

He pulls.

This time it hurts. Dean closes his eyes and screams and falls into Sam's arms.

-*-

"We did it," Sam says, awed, incredulous. Sam again with his clear eyes, red-rimmed from the battle and too little sleep.

They're sitting on the ground, leaning against a mesquite tree, succumbing to the exhaustion, the aches and the scrapes gained during the fight. He glances at Sam's profile and then at the angels who stayed back to help with the clean up – clinical way to say that they're disposing of the bodies and awkwardly trying to calm the de-possessed people.

Demons are still out there in such a great number that Dean's not sure how _done_ they are yet, or if it will take them a lifetime to fix everything they've broken.

There are questions that need answers. Why he and Sam, first of all, what was it about their blood that made it possible, for good or bad. But that's for later and even if they never know, Dean's all right with it. He's got enough talk of destiny to last him a lifetime or three.

Castiel is walking toward them – Dean may be wrong about that but his steps seem to have an energetic spring. He'll ask Castiel, maybe he'll get a straight answer for once.

Not today, though.

"Dean," Sam says.

Dean nods, but he's not sure they can take any credit for anything, too many variables and all they've done is hold onto each other, nothing else worth mentioning.

But maybe that was all that mattered, finding the right choices in the ones offered to them, under the crap piled above them and through the pain and the doubts.

Maybe the trick _was_ holding on.

"Yeah, we did it," Dean says and then, because he really wants one, "Dude, I need a cold beer."  
\--


End file.
